MIT discovers how to get ketchup out of the bottle

We’re always told that some of the world’s greatest minds end up at MIT, and this just proves it.

The school is touting a research project aimed at solving one of the most nagging problems of our time: How to get ketchup out of a bottle.

We’re not talking those plastic bottles you can squeeze. We’re talking the glass, long-necked bottles you see at diners all over the nation. You know, the ones you smack and smack and shake before finally just giving up. (Mmmm. French fries and mustard isn’t so bad, right?)

MIT isn’t telling us the secret angle for optimum ketchup removal or the correct velocity of shaking. (Nothing quite that immediate or mathematical.) Instead, they determined that a substance called LiquiGlide should be applied to the inside of bottles to help speed up the process.

Observe.

Here’s ketchup with LiquiGlide.

And here’s how ketchup usually works.

Researchers say it’s about more than just solving your dinner-time frustrations. It’s about reducing waste.

“It’s funny: Everyone is always like, ‘Why bottles? What’s the big deal?,'” MIT PhD candidate Dave Smith told FastCompany. “But then you tell them the market for bottles–just the sauces alone is a $17 billion market. And if all those bottles had our coating, we estimate that we could save about one million tons of food from being thrown out every year.”